Day skipper

[shibbs]

Anyone on here done it?
I’ve had competent crew for many years but after a bit of tall ship sailing when I was much younger I’ve not really done much since.
Last week I did the day skipper course and I’ve got to say, thoroughly enjoyed it, and actually look forward to doing a bit more.
Went out from Dartmouth, down to Salcombe for first night, into Plymouth for 2 nights including the night nav. Then back into kingswear before some bouy work in the river etc.
Had some interesting weather, very very gusty, but generally about 25kts of wind. Start point on way out was notnging short of disgusting. A little better on the way back and managed to make great time in quite a big sea.
Great fun ( and a little surprised at how enjoyable I found it).
Anyone else thought of or plans to do anything along those lines?

[Ianfs]

Hey Shibbs

I hope this thread doesn't make us go too much off topic but......

I think the Competent Crew course is well named and is what it says on the box. However I've suggested a few times that their Day Skipper has an under rated name and should in fact be called Yachtmaster Day or similar. As you know it is an in depth course and believe it or not Its content is actually very close to the full series of Yachtmaster courses only differing by accuracy during the course and qualifications required on the number of days as skipper and distance travelled, bearing in mind they base some of it on the rhumb line rather than around in circles.

So all in all, you may have a Day Skipper certification but in fact you are pretty close to that of a Yachtmaster Coastal.

[ColinR]

Day skipper is great fun and a fantastic grounding to navigation in the real world. I would suggest also doing the Coastal Skipper practical as well. You may not need much in terms of sports boats but as a confidence builder it's great. We were doing MOB training in an F7 under sails only The weather theory and passage planning gets a bit more technical but well worth it if you like that sort of thing.

[shibbs]

I think i will look into coastal skipper at some point in the future, i only did the Day Skipper as it was part of a course i'm on at work, but i did really enjoy it. As for passage planning and Met, i am learning it all in depth at the moment so by the time i come to the next phase of RYA it 'should', all be knowledge tha'ts already held. Currently getting my head fried with Rules of the road (IRPCS) , Rules 1-19 must be word for word, challenging to say the least.